I don't mean to be a tease, but we do have most of this sketched out... needing a final mechanics and edit cut pass. Ships can become Derelict by damage or by falling under a certain # of 'able crew' (with officers/high circle characters counting double, and anyone without the required rank counting as 1/2). There are also options to call the whole crew up, or to artificially raise the Crew Count for a short time in order to unlock certain maneuvers (All Hands on Deck/Look Alive!).

And believe me, designing a system that abstracts the crew (mostly) so the players and GM don't have to actually roll 100 Air Sailing Tests every hour, but still aligns to the rules presented there was... interesting. I think we did a good job. My system has things you don't see in other 'naval wargame' focused systems, and it can be used as a GM tool to present background action, to directly challenge the players tactically, or to allow a larger war-gamey conflict where mutliple commanders have to deal with each other's ships/troops. I'll update the thread when I can.